Strength Through Music
by screaming-poetically
Summary: She wants to laugh, wants to cry for what she has lost and gained, but she can’t. She can only feel content, and that is enough. Rick/Melinda.


Put your iTunes on shuffle, and write a drabble based on each of the first ten songs that play.

**Strength Through Music**

Tears and Laughter – Tall Tree 6ft Man

Melinda goes to Jim's grave most days. She hasn't forgotten about the shop, and she spends long hours there as well, but she goes to her husband's grave during her lunch hour and whenever she has the time. It's the only way she can feel close to him, even with his ghost haunting her.

She is at Jim's grave when Rick Payne returns to Grandview. She's not aware of it at first. When she looks back on it, she supposes Jim must have known, because he turned his head towards town and seemed curious, but altogether pleased, like some plan he had put into motion had finally come into its own.

Rick must have gone to the shop first, where Delia told him everything that had happened in his absence. He must have, because he comes to the cemetery immediately after, saying nothing as he takes her hand in his own. They stand like that for what seems like hours, what probably _was_ hours, because the light has faded and she can see the moon much clearer than before, and she feels bad for leaving Delia at the shop. Jim hasn't come back.

"I'm sorry I took so long," Rick says.

She leans her head against him and winds her arm around his own. "That's okay. You're here now."

Marvelous Things – Eisley

Her gift is a wonderful thing. She sees so many things, so many miraculous things every day, that she can't question how marvelous life really is. She sees bad things, too. Things like her husband's spirit, earth-bound and worried for her. Things like her empty bed and deserted house. Things like the way she looks now, so sad and broken, so _weary_.

She loves her gift, but with Jim gone, she worries that she will be taken away from her child. She can't be a ghost whisperer and be a single mom. For the first time, she is certain that she won't be able to do this alone.

She hears Rick exclaiming about something as he enters her store, and the thought is pushed far from her mind.

Winter Passing – The Academy Is…

It is her first Christmas without Jim. She thinks about spending it with Delia, Tim, and Ned, but decides that she simply cannot do that, can't interrupt their new family with her old sorrows.

She shows up on Rick's doorstep, snow in her hair and her hands shoved deep in her pockets. He smiles at her and welcomes her in, as if he was expecting her, and perhaps he was. He has enough food for two, and he actually bothered to decorate his house. (He tells her later that he did it for her, that it was all for her.)

The holiday isn't anything grand. It's just the two of them. But he makes her laugh so hard that she can't breathe, makes her _smile_, and she thinks that's enough. She worries briefly whether nor not this means that she's betraying Jim – the thought that he's dead doesn't change the way she feels about this – but his spirit has been absent since Rick returned to Grandview, so she's not too worried.

She falls asleep after too much wine and champagne, her head on Rick's shoulder. She wakes in the morning with his arm thrown over her waist and his face nuzzling into her neck. She extricates herself, careful not to wake him. She presses a kiss to his forehead before leaving.

Who Am I – Schuyler Fisk

Rick has trouble quantifying who he is to Melinda. They are great friends, closer than anything, but now Jim is dead, and he's a man, not just a professor who knows stuff about ghosts. He knows that she's coming to see him as someone she can be with, no one like Jim but still, someone who can warm her heart.

He can remember practicing telling her how he felt after her near-death experience at the plane crash memorial site, saying that every feeling in him just dropped, that all he could think about were the things that he hadn't told her, things he would never get to tell her…

And he realizes that he still feels that way. He loves her, there's no question about that now. Gabriel comes to him one day, and while he's wary, he cannot help but listen. Gabriel tells him that Kate is crossing over, but that she wants him to be happy. She wants him, he says, with Melinda.

"You need to be brave, Rick," Gabriel says in place of his wife. "For the first time, you need to fight for what you want. Love really is worth it, in the end. That's why cynics are so wary of love. It really is worth fighting for, dying for."

She crosses over, Gabriel leaves, and he is left, still not knowing what to do.

Run – Collective Soul

Melinda puts herself in danger _yet again_, and it is Rick who runs to her, who pulls her up by her arms and tells her sternly, "Don't you _ever_ do that to me again, Mel."

He pulls her close and he can feel her tears against his button-down. "I'm sorry, Rick," she says. "I'm so sorry." Her voice is warped by sobs.

She holds onto him tightly, her arms clutching at his back. She's so stupid, she thinks. She would have died if it hadn't been for Jim's spirit returning to her in the tunnels. And is that how she repays Rick for taking care of her, for helping her, these lengthy months? She can't help going into danger, she thought that it was for the ghosts, but she knows that deep down it was because she missed Jim so goddamn much. She wanted, in no small part, to be with him. To see the light and cross over, and be with everyone who had gone before. Grandma, Andrea, Tessa.

"Dammit, Melinda. This has to stop. I can't keep doing this. I forbid it."

She smiles weakly against him, and whispers back that she can live now. (She remembers Kate's words – _he's concerned for you, I remember when he used to be like that with me_ – and she can breathe again.)

Hey Now – Augustana

She crosses Jim over one hot summer evening, and he tells her that she loved him so well when he was alive that he had no unfinished business. He just wanted to see her heal and be happy. He doesn't look entirely pleased about what he's saying, but he at least looks like he accepts it, which is the most that she can hope to expect. She'll be fine with his small acceptance.

Rick finds her at the cemetery mere moments after Jim has gone into the light, and he looks angry – he was probably out looking for her, probably worried sick – but when he sees her face, the tears, he knows better than to say anything. He holds her hand gently, wipes away her tears, and Melinda is so overcome with love that she kisses him above her former husband's grave.

He seems surprised, but then he pulls her closer to him, tangling his hands in her hair as he kisses her back with a passion and gentleness she didn't even know he possessed.

This is her new beginning.

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out – Joseph Arthur

Rick moves over her in the half-light, a soft smile tugging at his lips even in the midst of _this_. She finds herself smiling back, and pulling him close to her so she can kiss away his smile with her own.

Their lovemaking is slow but sure, passionate but steady, and when he spills inside of her a memory of another man tugs at her memory, but she pushes it aside gently. She can only think of Rick these days.

Rick, who makes her smile and laugh and cry and worry and sigh. Rick, who makes her so many things, so many that she's lost track. Rick, her best friend and lover.

She doesn't know what she would have done without him. She thinks of all the letters she never sent, the ones that ended _I need you, please come home_. She thinks about how heartbroken she was when he left, about how he has always been by her side. They were probably a long time coming.

Even Jim had said, just before he crossed over, that he had seen how well Rick loved her long before he died. He had seen how dear the professor was becoming to her.

She wants to laugh, wants to cry for what she has lost and gained, but she can't. She can only feel content, and that is enough.

Fair – Remy Zero

She moves into Rick's house just before Christmas. She has been practically living there for months anyway, she reflects, so really it's about time.

She doesn't think so much about Jim anymore, and this worries her. Rick sees the worry, and one night they're sitting on the bench in the town square, his arm around her shoulders as she leans against him, and he tells her that it's okay to live. She presses a kiss to his jaw.

"I think," she says, "that I just needed to hear it from you."

She stands and offers him her hand. He takes it, curious.

"Dance with me," she whispers.

"Here?"

"Yes."

"Okay," he says. One hand finds her waist while the other takes her hand and raises it. They twirl slowly, closely, as the night moves on without them.

Nightminds – Missy Higgins

He asks her to marry him. He tells her that she is his life now, and that he has loved her for so long. He kisses her on the mouth, caresses her arms gently as he tries to convince her of the earnestness of his proposal.

She is convinced, now more than ever, that she really is a lucky woman. She can see that Rick is terrified, that he really thinks she might say no and walk away from all that they've shared together, and her heart breaks for him at the same time it swells with love.

"Yes," she finds herself saying. "A thousand times yes."

He looks surprised at first, and then laughs, picking her up and swinging her around.

She laughs with him.

Life In Technicolor II – Coldplay

She throws herself at him after the priest pronounces them husband and wife, kissing him fervently on the mouth, a promise in her lips.

She thinks of everything that has led her here. She thinks of the first time she met Rick, of all the times when she went to his office with vague questions and he gave her precise answers, of the time when she told him of her gift and her heart broke when he left her behind. She thinks of how she felt when he came to her with a not-quite-apology on his tongue.

She thinks of seeing his face above her own as she held onto Jim, just recently saved from the tunnels. She thinks of holding onto him as they said their goodbyes.

She thinks of his hand in her own by Jim's grave, of all of his solace and gentleness, of the way he made her feel like it was okay to be happy again.

She loves him. She really, truly does, and she knows that everything that has happened has happened for a reason. Everything in her life has been leading her to this one place and moment. Leading her to him.

They walk together, husband and wife, Rick and Melinda, and she turns her head to look at him, and is pleasantly surprised to find that he is looking at her as well, a soft grin on his face. The afternoon sunlight shines down on them as she takes his hand in her own and leans up, a promise in her eyes.

He kisses her then, and come what may, at least they're together now.


End file.
